The present invention relates to an image down-loading apparatus and system, and image down-loading method for down-loading a moving image, such as a live image, to a terminal or terminals connected to a computer network via the computer network.
Conventionally, an image down-loading system for providing a live image to unspecified or specified viewers (computers) via computer networks, such as an intranet and the Internet is known. For example, a live image may be down-loaded as it is embedded in a home page or as a part of a home page of the world wide web (WWW), and the down-loaded image is displayed on a display screen of a client device.
Consider a common computer network as shown in FIG. 9; an Internet terminal 10 accesses a WWW server 14 via the Internet 12, further accesses a video camera 16 linked to a home page of the WWW server 14, and requests an image sensed by the camera 16. The image sensed by the camera 16 is displayed in a browser of the terminal 10 using a plug-in, a helper-application, or a server-push technique.
It is advantageous for an image-providing-party to display advertisement of the party together with the live image as shown in FIG. 10A; however, it is possible for the terminal 10 to obtain only the image sensed by the camera 16. Moreover, it is possible to display advertisement of a third party instead of the original advertisement along with the image as shown in FIG. 10B. In other words, there is a fear that the image sensed by the camera 16 is plagiarized.